Fear, Exposed – Featuring Cara Stein
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Happy Monday, everyone. As usual, I’m pleased to present this week’s Fear, Exposed, written by Cara Stein. Cara is the resident writer and dreamer at 17000 Days, a blog about making the most of your time and making your best days a common occurrence. She’s also the author of the forthcoming book How to be Happy (No Fairy Dust or Moonbeams required). Whether you’re stuck, lost, or just looking to enjoy your life more, she wants to help because she’s been there. With that, I’ll let Cara do the talking today. Enjoy, everyone!
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Do you remember Brian, the nerdy boy in The Breakfast Club? As the characters all bond over the course of a Saturday in detention, it comes out why he’s there: he brought a flare gun to school and it went off in his locker. Why? He was taking shop class for an easy A, but the lamp he made wouldn’t turn on, so he got an F. He thought his life was ruined because he got an F on one project, so he was going to kill himself.
It’s embarrassing, but Brian was the Breakfast Club character I related to most. Not the pretty, popular girl; not even the weird girl. The nerd.
I listened, did as I was told, learned to please, and got perfect grades. Every teacher except fifth grade wrote “a joy to have in class“ on my report card.
In fifth grade, I had to give an oral report on dinosaurs and the different eras they lived in. I waited until the last minute–lunch period right before that class–to do the poster. I ran out of time. It looked like crap, and I had no friggin’ clue about dinosaurs. Still don’t.
I failed.
And I thought I was going to die.
I also thought you would automatically die if you ever crashed your car, took drugs, or had unprotected sex. (You’d get AIDS, not die from the sex itself.) (You’d also get pregnant, guaranteed.) All those dramatic movies they used to make us watch in health class? I don’t remember if they actually said we’d die, but that’s the impression I got.
The world was a scary place for the Cara of fifth grade, and the sad thing is, I didn’t rethink those notions as I got older and developed more capacity for reasoning. I was convinced that anything going wrong = total disaster, game over.
According to Dan Baker, author of What Happy People Know, all fear boils down to two things: fear of not having enough, and fear of not being enough. I think he’s right. In fact, you can almost reduce those two to one: why wouldn’t you have enough? Because you aren’t good enough to get what you need.
Fear of not being enough. Fear of failure.
So I had an ordinary childhood, grew up a perfectionist with way too much need for approval. Married young, got miserable, got a divorce. Joined a church that reinforced my faulty assumptions about how the world works, only this time instead of
take drugs = die
the equation looked more like
be you = go to hell
They didn’t say it that way, of course. They gave me examples (saints) to emulate. They told me good stuff, like be kind to the poor and love your neighbor. But they also told me screwed up stuff, like die to your self, submit your will, gossiping is as bad as murder, thinking about something is as bad as doing it. Always put others before yourself.
Needless to say, that didn’t help.
I ended up trapped in my own life with the walls closing in, afraid of making a mistake or even thinking the wrong thing.
To be more specific, here’s a partial list of my worst fears.
- being a bad wife
- being wrong about getting married again (this was my second marriage–I should have known better!)
- quitting (read: failing) at another marriage
- being stuck in this situation forever
- weakness
- having the people who think I’m smart or good realize I’m not
- looking foolish
- wasting my life
- not doing a good enough job
- not knowing everything
- not being perfect
- getting fired
- failing
…oh yeah, and I almost forgot:
- going to hell
I gave up control of my life, spent all of my energy trying to help or serve others, and grew weaker and more helpless in the cage I had made for myself, never realizing I had the power to change anything.
Sometimes, the only way to defuse a fear is to experience it firsthand.
I was put on steroids to combat an allergic reaction, and they totally threw me for a loop. I couldn’t sleep more than three hours a night, and even that was difficult. I went manic. It felt like I had all these extra connections in my brain that normally weren’t there, and my bullshit and denial factories shut down.
Suddenly, life came into focus. My marriage was unworkable. My job was pointless. My house was way too expensive.
I don’t like living with anyone, never have. I don’t want to have to drive 20-30 minutes to work each day. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in an office. I don’t really have to do anything.
With the sudden clarity came some drawbacks. I lost the ability to process details. I couldn’t concentrate. I got overwhelmed easily. All of which make it damn hard to get any programming done.
At work, I went from being an overachiever to Wally from Dilbert. I’m still not sure whether there was a real problem with my brain or I just couldn’t make myself give a shit any more, but either way, I accomplished next to nothing for an entire year.
And the strikes at the bullshit and denial factories? Pretty much killed my marriage.
FAILURE!!!
It found me at last. In my eyes, I was a complete fuck-up. Failed marriage, zero at work, kapow!
But you know what? It was all ok. I discovered that I’m much happier living alone. Despite my poor performance at work, amazingly, I didn’t even get fired.
Most importantly, it woke me up.
I took the time to rethink everything, see what was working and what wasn’t, ferret out my faulty assumptions and show them the door.
Instead of refusing to show my real self to anyone for fear of being rejected, I started being real, opening up, showing the weaknesses and vulnerabilities, the mercenary tendencies, the selfishness. It was terrifying at first–I was sure that when people saw my uglier side, they’d run screaming. But then I thought about it, and the thing I feared most–losing people I cared about–had already happened on other occasions, and I had survived. Lo and behold, rather than ending, my relationships got a lot deeper.
Instead of rushing into love out of fear that I’d be alone forever, I stayed more objective, observed my crushes, and watched them dissipate on their own after a few weeks. Eventually, I found love again, but this time I voiced my feelings and needs. (Before I was too afraid of saying anything.)
Instead of quitting my job the second I hated it, I stuck it out. This was less due to any strength or rationality than out of fear and gratitude, but the amazing part is the job got better. I regained my ability to concentrate and got better work with a great manager. I started liking it again and doing well.
I’m still refining and looking for ways to make my life even better. The current project is discovering work I love and building a way to support myself with it. I’m really excited to see where this goes. Instead of seeing the specter of failure around every corner, now I see possibilities, learning, and growth.
In the end, this is the gift fear gave to me.
Failure, the thing I feared most, triggered my rebirth. It caused me to rethink everything, and rebuild consciously, choosing only the things I want in my life. I’m still in transition, but maybe that’s inherently part of growth.
We all have fear. What I’ve found is that the fear that comes with powerlessness feels worse than the fear that comes with danger.
Powerlessness is an illusion. Even failure doesn’t have to be catastrophic. Some people (like me!) have to learn lessons the hard way, but if you’re smarter than that, don’t wait for failure or life meltdown. Take a good hard look at your life now. Find out what you like, what you don’t, what you want more of, what you want less of. Then build the life you want. Keep sculpting it better and better.
If you want, send fear a thank you note. That’ll really piss it off (and your grandmother will be so proud)!
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